


sink me in the river at dawn

by daughterofrohan



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, I'm so sorry, literal angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4081432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofrohan/pseuds/daughterofrohan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ll always be leaving,” she told him as the morning air filtered through the window, setting her hair on fire, causing sparks to dance in her eyes. He wondered if she knew the effect she had on him when she lay tangled up in him, head resting on his chest, free and uninhibited in the way that only the morning could make her. She had to know she was beautiful. She heard it often enough. But it was a different kind of beauty, he reflected. Beauty that made his heart ache with longing. Beauty that made him nostalgic for a time and a place and a feeling he couldn’t name if he tried.<br/>“As long as you’re always coming back,” he whispered, kissing her the way they always kissed before a mission; soft and gentle and sweet. Like a promise. But not goodbye, never goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sink me in the river at dawn

**Author's Note:**

> this is the product of not enough sleep and too many feelings. i apologize.

There’s no funeral. There’s no funeral because there’s no body and he refuses to let them bury an empty casket so they can say meaningless words, so they can list her various accomplishments, so people can line up and shake his hand and give their condolences as they express how much they’ll miss the woman they never even got to know. He doesn’t want to share her with all the people who thought they knew her when really they’d never even broken her surface. No, he wants to remember her as she was.

What she was, was warm and smart and funny, soft underneath a tough exterior, fiercely protective of those she called her friends. She was beautiful and strong and unpredictable in the most predictable way. She was his mirror and his window, the one who looked past all his facades and personas and saw him for exactly who he was; broken and damaged and struggling to hold himself together, and loved him for it.

_“Love is for children,” she’d whisper against his lips._

_“Let’s be children tonight,” he’d whisper back._

The part that kills him the most is that he wasn’t there. He’d never given much thought to how it would happen before, but he always assumed it would end with her in his arms, that his face would be the last face she saw. Instead, it ended on a routine safety check when the building went up in flames. They said there were no survivors. He can’t help but wonder though, can’t help but hope that maybe, just _maybe_ , there was a mistake. It’s too cruel, he thinks, the way it had to end. For her to one day leave on a solo mission and never come home. He’s always assumed that she’d leave one day, but _not like this, never like this_. Every part of him aches for one more kiss, one more touch, one more hushed declaration, _one more._

_“I’ll always be leaving,” she told him as the morning air filtered through the window, setting her hair on fire, causing sparks to dance in her eyes. He wondered if she knew the effect she had on him when she lay tangled up in him, head resting on his chest, free and uninhibited in the way that only the morning could make her. She had to know she was beautiful. She heard it often enough. But it was a different kind of beauty, he reflected. Beauty that made his heart ache with longing. Beauty that made him nostalgic for a time and a place and a feeling he couldn’t name if he tried._

_“As long as you’re always coming back,” he whispered, kissing her the way they always kissed before a mission; soft and gentle and sweet. Like a promise. But not goodbye, never goodbye._

He wonders if he’d have held her tighter, kissed her harder, if he knew it was the last time. He wonders if he’d have ever let her go. He wonders how the world can be so cruel to not even say _this is your last chance, so take it_.

He reaches into his pocket and his fingers brush against the tip of the small silver arrow, the only part of her he has left. SHIELD extraction found it somehow, among the wreckage of the burned-down warehouse. Hill had given it to him, off the record. _“We’re supposed to keep these sorts of things as evidence, Barton,”_ she’d said. _“But I know she’d want you to have this.”_ He resists the urge to pull it from his pocket and fling it away. At first he’d held onto it like he’d held onto his hope, convinced that she’d left it there on purpose as a message to him, that she’s okay, that she’s alive. Now, holding onto it is holding onto her because he doesn’t want to let go. And it’s killing him, slowly.

Their apartment in the Tower looks exactly the same as it did the day she left. Her sweater is flung haphazardly over the back of a chair, her half-empty mug of tea, long gone cold, still sitting on the coffee table on top of a report she never finished filling out. The wall is a mess of pictures with one common theme; the rooftop view of every city they’ve ever been to. His eyes pick out Budapest immediately by the soft and yet vibrant colours of the sunset, and he remembers the way he saw the light reflected in Natasha’s eyes, remembers the warmth of her lips on his, remembers making love on a rooftop, covered in blood and dirt and sweat, while a city burned below them. The smell of her perfume still lingers on his favourite flannel. Tears prick his eyes as he realizes that the scent will fade until one day it’s only a memory. He holds the shirt and lets his tears fall into it, breathing in the scent of her while he still can.

In the closet is a painting. He knows this because of the number of times he’s taken it out and stared at it, running his fingers over the canvas. Steve had showed it to him one day, shyly, a look on his face saying _I’m not sure this is allowed._ It’s him and Natasha on the roof of Stark Tower, her head resting on his shoulder, the sun rising on the horizon. He remembers that morning like it was yesterday but never knew that Steve had been there too, watching. _“Can I keep this?”_ he’d asked, holding the painting reverently. Steve had nodded eagerly. _“Please.”_ Natasha had looked at him with fire in her eyes when he’d shown her, kissed him roughly, her entire body pressed up against his. He takes the canvas out now, tracing over Natasha’s painted silhouette with his fingers, imagining that he can feel the softness of her hair and the warmth of her body next to his.

The rest of the team dance around him just like they did after the events of New York. Except this time it’s worse because he doesn’t have Natasha to mediate for him. They don’t know how to handle him when he’s on edge like she does, _did_ , so they treat him like a time bomb. He doesn’t blame them. Sometimes he feels like exploding. Sometimes, though, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night with an emptiness in his chest and tears still wet on his face and make his way to the kitchen, to find a pot of coffee already brewed, even though the room is empty. He knows they’re all trying to help, in the ways that they can, in the ways that he’ll let them.

One sleepless night finds him on the roof, because the wide open sky and the cool air give him clarity he can’t achieve indoors. He feels like his mind might burst with the weight of everything. He thinks about how easy it would be to fling himself from the roof, knows he never would because he’s not brave like she was.

The door opens and then shuts behind him and he turns. Barnes. The other guy at the Tower that everyone’s been walking on eggshells around. The other guy who’s been deemed unstable and liable to explode at any moment. It fits, he thinks, the two of them on top of the roof together. It fits in a twisted sort of way that leaves him sick to his stomach.

“I want to die,” Clint says as Barnes approaches the edge of the roof, standing next to him.

“She’d call you a coward.” He always forgets that Bucky knew Natasha too.

“She’d be right.”

They stand in silence because it hurts less than speaking. “You need to let go,” Bucky says finally. “You don’t need to forget, but you need to let go.”

 ***

“Where are you going?” Tony addresses Clint’s back.

He twines the chain of the arrow necklace around his fingers. “Out.”

“With your bow?”

He doesn’t answer, just continues making his way towards the door. Until Tony’s next words stop him in his tracks.

“Is this about Natasha?”

He turns, defeated, opening his hand to show the arrow sitting in his palm, the chain tangled around his fingers. _It’s always about Natasha_.

“We’re coming,” Steve says decisively.

“No.”

“Barton.” Clint’s eyes flick up to meet Bucky’s. “You’re not the only one who loved her.”

He nods mutely because he can’t argue, and because out of everyone in the world, the five men standing in front of him are probably the only ones who knew her as someone besides Agent Romanoff, someone besides the Black Widow. They knew her as _Natasha_.

They follow behind Clint without speaking and he’s grateful for their silence, grateful because it allows him time to reflect. His head is full of memories; old memories, recent memories, memories that are happy, sad, painful. He runs through each in turn before filing it away in the back of his mind, not forgetting, but not letting it consume him. Letting go.

He stops walking when they reach the river and pulls an arrow from his quiver. He pulls the second arrow, Natasha’s arrow, from his pocket, twining its chain around the shaft of his arrow until he’s certain it won’t come off. He draws the bow and nocks the arrow, staring out over the water. The sun is just beginning to set, the kind of sunset that sets the world on fire, and the sky is the colour of her hair. He breathes. Inhale. Exhale.

“Clint.” Tony’s voice is surprisingly gentle. “Did you want to say anything?”

There are so many things he wants to say, but they don’t belong here. “I can’t,” he chokes out around the lump in his throat.

Thor lays a strong hand on his shoulder. “May she rest with the warriors,” he says simply.

Clint nods, allowing his tears to spill over as he looses the arrow, letting it fly into the light of the setting sun.

“Natasha,” Bruce murmurs as the arrow pierces the water. The rest of them take up the whisper until it sounds like even the water and the wind are whispering her name.

_Natasha. Natasha. Natasha._

He stands there as her name echoes around him, staring at the spot where his arrow pierced the water, feeling like it pierced his heart instead.

_Natasha._

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com) if you don't hate me and stuff


End file.
